The Waiting, Electric
by tiltedsyllogism
Summary: It wasn't the first time Sherlock had touched John. But something had changed - John wasn't sure what it was. It might have been everything. **** a 5 1 of 221bs.
1. Chapter 1

John struggled to open his eyes. His ribs were hot, his hands were cold, and his face was… something was different about it.

"John!"

John's eyes were sticky. He lifted his arm to rub at—no, that wasn't going to work, was it. There was blood on his face, gumming his eyes together. And that heat in his ribs, that was pain.

"John, please…"

Bricks to his back, cold puddle soaking his jeans. And Sherlock above him: Sherlock's voice, but strange and sharp.

"Mmmmph."

The strangeness on his face shifted, and he recognized it: leather gloves, cupping his face. John pulled his eyes open. Sherlock was staring at him, eyes cinder-bright.

"Halligan's men jumped you. "

Damnit. "Did they…"

"Shhh, stay still." Sherlock cut him off, thumb stroking along his jawbone. "Your rib may be broken, it's best you don't move."

John sank into Sherlock's touch until the shrill of a siren stabbed him awake. When the medics appeared half a moment later, Sherlock was upright, remote, issuing directions in a voice John would have recognized right away.

And then Sherlock was gone, shut out by the ambulance doors. A medic's hand on his wrist, another voice reciting chart data, but still: alone. John lay restless, feeling the ghost of Sherlock's touch on his face, and wondered what else had broken.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hurry up," Sherlock said, as they pelted out the door. "She might still be alive."

And she might have been, John thought, as he and Sherlock waited for coroner's team to arrive. It had been thirty minutes to Southall. Now they were here, and Praggya Khatri's body was still warm, and Sherlock was pacing the half-restored flat as if Fred Bailey had somehow fiddled with his wiring, too.

John wanted to touch him, ground him – hand on the arm, a shoulder squeeze. He'd wanted that a lot, lately, since that night in the alley. But he wasn't sure it would be welcome, and he couldn't trust himself anymore. So he only stood, waiting for the orbit of Sherlock's pacing to bring him close.

"We'll stop him," he said quietly. "He can't have got far."

"Praggya's parents will be relieved," snapped Sherlock.

John sighed and leaned against the wall. "You've saved a lot of other girls today," he said. "Their parents won't thank you, but that's because they won't know what might have happened, without you. And that… that's incalculable."

Sherlock looked at him, hard. John looked back, and eventually the glare melted. Sherlock gave a small nod and leaned against the wall next to him. Close enough to touch. John felt the pull, felt it like gravity, but held back.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock was bleeding, again. Lord Walpole was a gentleman embezzler, rather than a hand-to-hand fighter, but he had managed to slice open Sherlock's palm before John knocked him down.

"John will see to it," Sherlock told Lestrade, and breezed off in that way he liked doing.

John followed slowly. His knee was stiff where he had pressed into Lord Walpole's back, waiting for the police to arrive and cuff the bastard properly. His pulse was high, but that was different.

Three weeks ago, Sherlock had touched John's cheek in an alleyway, and John's skin had told him something he had never known about himself. It was a secret he wasn't sure he could trust it to keep.

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock went straight for the loo, where John's patch-up jobs typically happened. John followed, pausing at the threshold.

Sherlock was seated on the toilet, palm upturned. He glanced up at John and frowned. "Something wrong?"

"Course not," John replied briskly. "Let's get you cleaned up. Blot up that blood, I'll get the sutures."

His hand was steady as he took hold of Sherlock's clean, damp wrist, and the needle in his fingers did not shake. Sherlock bent over close to watch the stitchwork, fascinated as always. His face safely above Sherlock's sightlines, John bit his lip until he tasted blood.


	4. Chapter 4

John checked his watch. 8:47.

Harry had said seven, though she had warned him that it might be more like seven thirty. That probably meant eight, John had figured.

At nine o'clock, he tucked a five quid note under his water glass and left.

The restaurant Harry had picked was only about a mile from Baker Street. The night was cold, but John had nearly two hours of anxious waiting built up in his limbs. Walking was the next best thing to shouting. Harry wasn't even there to be shouted at.

John stood on the front stoop for nearly two minutes, doing the breathing exercises, but the door still slammed when he closed it, and he still swore at the sudden crack of it echoing in the vestibule. It was too dusty, oppressively small. Walking felt like the only thing his body knew how to do. But he had stopped moving, and the pain had crept in. He took the steps gingerly.

Sherlock was at his microscope and did not glance up. John was grateful, really. He dropped his coat on his chair and sighed. Sherlock did look up, then.

"John," was all he said. John felt his leg shake, and suddenly Sherlock was there, his arms around John's shoulders, holding him steady while John squeezed his eyes shut and breathed.


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't often that Sherlock was wrong. And if John usually gloated a bit (could you even say "usually" about something that had happened thrice in two years?) well, he reckoned that anyone who knew Sherlock would understand.

But he wasn't gloating this time.

John leaned against the doorframe, drawn by the silence. He watched as Sherlock stood in the middle of the sitting room, staring at the greeting card, haughty in his dressing gown and slippers.

"Praggya's mother won't thank me," Sherlock had said bitingly, as they stood over the still-warm body of the girl whose killer they caught two days later, two days late.

Sherlock wasn't often wrong, but it was often enough for John to know what it looked like: surprise, chagrin, maybe a snarl. This was different.

John steeled himself and marched across the room. It was closer than they had been in almost a week, when Sherlock had held John and let him cry out all his frustration about Harry. And it had helped, God it had helped, even as John's breath went to war with itself, struggling to keep all his feelings where they belonged.

Sherlock stared down at him, blank as blank, and wordlessly John gathered him in. Feeling Sherlock lean against him, John swallowed hard, holding his own chest together with sheer bravado.


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock sat down in his chair, opposite John, and looked.

Plaid shirt, denims, rust red cardigan. Insecure. Why insecure? Sherlock needed more data.

John's eyes were fixed on the floor in front of him. Possibilities: tired (shadows under eyes corroborated this); anxious (a cognate of insecurity); both tired and anxious. Or he could simply be concentrating hard on a problem he found challenging. But why wouldn't he ask Sherlock? John was well aware of Sherlock's problem-solving abilities. Sometimes John did like to try on his own, which Sherlock supposed was good for him, if inefficient.

Posture: back straight, feet planted hard, hands gripping his own thighs.

Anxious, then. Cause unknown.

Sherlock reviewed the past few days. As far as John was concerned, they had been almost entirely uneventful; he had briefly lost his temper three days ago after breaking the mug, but had otherwise been tranquill. A bit distant, but that was a problem Sherlock was getting used to. His own problem, not John's.

Perhaps John was also upset about the card from Praggya's mother. Sherlock, lurching between his own disquiet (card) and white-out immersion (John, touching him: increasingly infrequent), had failed to assess John's own mental state. Idiotic, but there was nonetheless a pleasing ironic symmetry to the oversight; it was not an error he would have made before… before.

Postulate: John had overcome his own recent aversion to Sherlock's person to offer him physical comfort, in response to perceived need.

Postulate: John was, now, himself in a state of previously-undiagnosed distress.

Hypothesis: Physical contact, otherwise unwelcome, might be at present acceptable or even desirable. Even if John did not, in the event, welcome the contact, he would recognize and maybe even appreciate Sherlock's intentions. He would not, at least, be disgusted.

Sherlock rigorously cross-examined his own analysis. Motivated reasoning was a despicable mental failure. Impermissible.

Nevertheless, a thorough review revealed no weaknesses. Sherlock stood, then stopped. The prospect of being wrong was intolerable. After all, there was no way to collect evidence without experimenting.

Sherlock crossed to John's chair, bit his lip, and laid one tentative hand on his friend's shoulder.

John's still form went electric under Sherlock's hand: mistake. Abort. But lightning-fast, before Sherlock could move, John seized Sherlock's wrist, held Sherlock's hand to his shoulder as if forcing it to take root.

Sherlock stared. John's eyes remained fast to the floor, and he was trembling.

"Please," he said, nearly whispering.

Sherlock swallowed. "Yes," he choked out.

Silence. He found himself repeating, idiotically: "Yes."

John turned and looked at him. So Sherlock said again, more loudly:

"Yes."

And at the corner of John's mouth, a smile began to bloom.


End file.
